


Not you, never you, the bits that didn't make the cut

by Monmonjimae



Series: Smokes and Constants [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Child Neglect, Haruno Sakura is So Done, Haruno Sakura-centric, I gave Sakura a sister, I'll tag as I go, Naruto is a Little Shit, Protective Haruno Sakura, Smart Uzumaki Naruto, Team seven is more dysfunctional than before, Uchiha Sasuke Being an Asshole, haruno is a legit clan, naruto is a really bad friend, uchihas are dumb
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:06:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24312481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monmonjimae/pseuds/Monmonjimae
Summary: You know that one fic I wrote? Yeah that one where I kept rewriting the same damn chapter and probably piss off all of my readers?This is all the parts that didn't make the cut.
Series: Smokes and Constants [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1518752
Kudos: 11





	1. mebuki fist draft

**Author's Note:**

> OK, so some of these doesn't actually fit into the story's lore anymore, but I'll tell you which ones are and which ones aren't! So uh... have fun reading through the shitfest?  
> Oh and there'll be swearing, nearly forgot.
> 
> edit : NEVER MIND NOTHING IS NOT CANNON IGNORE EVERYTHING I SAID

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so a bit of context, I wrote this a while ago and this is how I planned for Mebuki to actually die, but then I changed it half way because I'm indecisive like that. So you can see that the chapter is largely unfinished, there's even still notes that I didn't get around to editing, but it's never going to make it in the actual fic so I just decided to put this here.

<<non canon>>

//Add more description about the baby//

Kokai screams. Boulders the size of woks sprays off mountains and mashes bones. Blood spray around her like a garden hose. Her eyes go grey from plums of smoke. Her mother yells, a death grip on her arm. 

She’s pulled through seas of meat. Their cries are more like a stampede. Her heart hammers in her ears. The baby wails. 

_ Kyuubi-! _

Orange rip through the air. Destruction. 

The air’s thick like lava. Tails whips through the sky as the reaper’s scythe. It thunders beneath her, the dirt- the rocks- the  _ screams _ . 

White bubbles behind them like a coiling sephant, charging for their souls. She’s yanked aside, bits of housing whizzing past her head. She yells, alarmed, tears pool in her eyes. Her world is falling, shaking- breaking. 

Her mother crumples around them against the blaze. She chokes, her nylon dress burbles- searing down to bone. Soot and ash mix with sweat, plastic ripple through the burn, blood like sauce drips down her trembling limbs.

“Mama!” Sand cuts her throat, her scream cuts even deeper. She sobs, red dripping down her cheek. 

Mebuki grunts, her eyes dripping blood. “Turn it off.”

“Wha-”

She cries, pebbles lodge in her wound. “Turn it off!”

“Ma-!”

She snatches her daughter's arm, pushing off the blistered ground. Boulders graze her heel. Two steps away the demon’s tail grins. She swore, their cries cleave at her heart. 

She calls out to her mama, voice lost to the flames. The hold on her arm tightens. Walls crumble around them and blood pools. Her mother doesn’t look back, pulling them closer. 

She snarls, eyes as red as her back.

Hand seals flash like lightning. Palm slams against the earth. Lines unsnarl, breaking throughout the ground. 

Dirt storms around, skitting off the neon barricade. Rocks and tiles storm the fort, each attempt renders it into dust, atomized by her chakra. The tails thrash them like a drum and the green walls spinter. Mebuki cries, flooding the seal with chakra. White engulfs them and ground caves. 

The tail smiles, lashing out once more. She snatches them up with a yell.  Spiraling away she pulls out a kunai, hurling it at the clift, burying it to the hilt. Wire flashes from the kunai’s tail and she  _ yanks.  _

Dirt implodes at her back. She doesn’t dare look. Her babies shake in her arms, blood leaking out their eyes. 

Her toes barely graze the clift before she dash off again. Destruction nipping at her heels. 

They’re going to get out of this alive damn it, even if it fucking kills her.

She sails through the air like a wingless swan, foot barely snags onto the edge of a roof. Her ankle snaps like sugar cane. She grunts, shards of bone jutting out her skin. //have her be chakra exhausted and limping around the streets//

//have mebuki be dodging boulders again but bc of broken ankle, she cant jump or run so she shoves her ring in kokai's hands and tells her to “take care sweetpea.” as a last resort she pushes Kokai an Sakura out of the boulder’s path//

She flies- soars through the air. 

//insert mebuki getting crushed in slomo, also describe how their eyes meet for one last time. Make the audience cry//

“Mama-” She groans, bile at the back of her throat. She crawls towards the body. “Mama no please- no don’t go! Mama!” She wails, swinging desperately at the rock, elbow deep in red. “Mama!”

Her world spins. 

The baby’s crying, clings to her shirt with her pudgy toddler hands. Red dots her sister’s skin, her cheeks hot with blood. Soot cakes her skin like a mask, riverbanks along the dread.

//a boulder lands on the house next to her, she looks down at her sister and knows she has to go. She mutters apologies and notices a ring. She glances between the sky, the baby and her mother and runs, a stray explosion tag goes off in the air. Her eyes bleed.//

//Nashiko finds her with the baby and nearly cries in relief. She asks her where mebuki was, her eyes bleed when kokai shows her the bloody ring// . 


	2. bloody tears

not connon :P

\-----

“What- Why is that red!?” 

The sky closes in.

“.. Is… That blood?”

No-

“You’re a monster! Who cries blood?!” 

She’s not-   
“Get away from me!!”

Dirt sprays across her head. She gingerly paws at her elbows, grazes along the meat of her palms. 

“You’re a freak!!”

Sakura chokes on her snot, her tongue like apples in a stuffed bigs mouth. Blood oozes from her eyes like tracks of tears and she sobs. She clenches at the hems of her pants, blood blooming along the grass, red sinks into her shirt like arrows through a head. 

“Freak!”

Blood dribbles down her chin like words and her knees tremble from the scrape. 

She did it again. 

Such a  _ baby _ . 

If she wasn’t such a  _ big fat baby _ , they might have been friends with her. They might have befriended the normal girl with a normal clan with normal tears. They wouldn’t have known that she was Haruno. Harunos aren’t liked, they’re not even that strong. They don’t have powerful doujutsus that would ensnare an enemy with a single glance, they don’t even have any secret clan techniques. They’re not like the Uchiha, who’s shit is worshipped like kings. Or even the Aburame, rejected yet respected. 

They’re just Haruno. A merchant clan with merchant seals and freaky monster tears. 

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!” Her knees burn from the fall. “I’m not a monster I swear!” 

“That’s what a monster would say!” He yells, nails caked with dirt. “Go away!”

“I’m not-!”

“Away!”

Dirt flies across the field, punching into her face like a speeding canoe. 

“Go away!”

She runs. 

Trees fly past at an alarming rate. Bushes tugs at her legs and feet, their hooks latch onto her tiny legs. Grass fades into hard packed dirt and alleys give way to sardine packed streets. She bursts into the market, tiny and bleeding. She steps on feets, lots of them, they would shout and freeze to see the tracks of blood- they’d always peel away in disgust. 

She could hear it now. The whispers behind closed palms, the sneers beneath their breaths. 

She doesn’t want it- 

She doesn’t want any of this!

Why couldn’t they just be a normal clan! Why do their tears come out as blood? Why didn’t they have spinny red eyes or even mind fucking jutsus!? Why not cool shadows or even super strength!? Chakra control is useless! Useless useless useless! 

Sakura breaks through the bushes, away from the busy red streets, away from their sneers and pitying glances. 

She didn’t ask for this! She didn’t ask to be born! She didn’t want to cry blood! She doesn’t want to be a monster- doesn’t want to be a freak! She just-

She just wants a friend.

Green eyes stare upon great green doors. //insert academy description// The academy. She’d ran to the academy. Not home, not into the forest, no. She ran to the academy. 

She ran to the  _ academy _ . 

The doors squeals open to a flood of bodies. 

“Sakura?” 

Her nose flares with anguish, voice box squeezed like toothpaste. “Nee-chan-”

And she leaps. 

She dives into a world of smells, of sweat of dirt- of  _ home _ . She cries into her sister’s chest, sobs wracking her four year old heart. Her brain swells with pain like a bursting blister but all she can think is  _ home. _

Kokai sighs, picking her sister up around the waist. “What's wrong snowflake?”

“Nee-chan-”

She shushes her, pressing her lips to her forehead. “It’s okay.” She holds Sakura in her arms, not minding the blood blooming across her shirt. “Nee-chan’s here.”

\-----

Alternate route (but still holds true is, the character I mean)

\-----

A man snags her arm. 

“What are you doing here?”

It’s Inori. Long black hair and the same black eyes stare back at her. His skin blisteringly pale in the afternoon sun. He’d sweep his hair into a ponytail at the base of his skull, bandages that restrains it stained morbidly brown. He wears his high collared blue shit in a way that was strangely Uchiha, the thing was more of a parted skirt, having been tied in at the waist with a white utility belt. His pants are grey. They’re never grey. It was always the same black as his standard Haruno sandals. 

“Sakura?”

“Why are your pants grey?”

He blinks, taking his hand off her arm to ruffle around his pockets. “No no, what happened? Your grandmother will have me lynched if I return you in this sorry state.” He pulls out a handkerchief, this one white. 

She shakes her head, dirt dusting her snot smeared cheeks. “N’ing happened. I tripped.”

He hums, busy wiping off the tracks of blood and dust. “Right, of course.” The fabric soon became brown and he chucks it aside without a second thought. 

“You can’t litter.” She sniffs. “My sister says it’s bad and not polite.”

“It’s not littering if it doesn’t touch the ground.” He pulls out another one like the magic sleeve trick, how much does he even carry at the back of his ass? “Here.”

She squints at him but takes it anyway, it was pointless to argue with him on these things, she doesn’t even need to check to know that the fabric has vanished. Frigging ninja wizard. 

“Oh yeah! I have some free coupons to the hot springs, want it?” 

Sakura grins, skin tight and smeared with snot.

_ Ninja wizard.  _

”Oh, it’s you.”

He sighs, lifting some mochi up to his lips. “Wow, is that all I get?”

Kokai snorts and toes off her shoes. Her backpack weighs down her tiny shoulders, bloated with homework and academy scrolls. “Kya. It’s the great holy Inori. I’m so flattered to feast my eyes on his disgusting face.” 

His eyes rolled so far they nearly fell into the back of his head. “Yikes, I’m so flattered.”

“You should b-” she squints. “Is that my akafuku?”

Inori cackles, mouth full of stolen sweets. “Well I believe I deserve such a luxury after a rescue mission from the gods.”

“You goddamn dirtbag! I was saving that for Sakura!”

“Whoops!” he winks without an ounce of remorse. “Sozzy~”

Kokai just sighs, too tired for his bullshit. She stumbles past him, arms bruised and sore. Her hand darts out, nabbing the mochi stick before it could drill through the back of her head. She waits.

“Haruno Sakura, tears from both eyes, dirt on face and torso, scapes along palms and knees.” He pulls up from the couch and floats out the living room. He turns. “The Akafuku’s in the fridge.”

“...Park?”

“Most likely.”

She sucks in a breath between her teeth and scratches at her neck. “Thanks. I owe you one.”

“Anything for my baby sisters.” He reaches into his weapon pocket.

She wobbles towards the bathroom, wood creaks beneath her feet. “Just don’t make too much noise or I’ll dump slugs in your bed.”

“...You’re welcome...”

“Oh and,” She stops around the corner of a wall. “Can you boil some water?”

Inori smirks, chock-full of Uchiha pride with a heat seal in hand. “Way ahead of you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh yeah, I tried to put a bit of canon sakura in there, it didn't work. By this time I've changed so much about her background that this reaction wouldn't make sense.  
> But everything in there is true~


	3. Chapter 3

Not canon  
\----  
Her sister blinks at her stare and sends a smile her way, eyes crips like gold threaded jade. She grins back with twice the force, so much so that she feels the tear in her cheeks. Ichika waddles over in a flash to seize the opportunity, squeezing her cheeks red with her pinchers. She grumbles and scrubs at them, her cheeks redder than a monkey’s ass, she side eyes the near fifty women.  
Their grandma straightens up with a kitsune’s grin. “Alright Ko-chan! Out the front with your practice blade!” She looks to her. “And you, finish your food and we’ll go over the fist half of shape transformation. You’ve been studying that haven’t you?”  
“Yeah but-” She scraps the rice into her mouth. “-Don’t you have that Ibiki thing? It’s already seven ya know?”  
“Bah, it’s not super urgent and I usually come in at eight anyways.” She shuffles towards their front door. “Plus, it’ll teach him some goddamn respect.”  
She shrugs and starts to scarf down the rest of her food, chowing it down even faster as she hears the clack of her sister’s practice blade. The front door closes with a click and she just finishes her omelet, now all there is left is the pile of stir fry that her grandma piled on, she glares at the pile and fire burns up her throat- wait no that’s just an acid reflux.   
After she finishes her breakfast, the plates are deposited into the sink, her chair is pushed in before she waddles to the genkan and slides on her sandals. The dull thud of wood on metal has her blood rushing way past the speed limit as she pushes open their door. Her grandmother and sister are duking it out on their front lawn, well it was more like a circle of packed dirt surrounded with flowers, kind of cultish if you ask her. Morning rays drip off their porch like lava and bounces off their plants harmlessly. Their front and only yard is bordered with white limestone walls and its size is fairly standard, the older folks said that after the Senjus disbanded their land was absorbed by them since their clan was a bit too tight for comfort. It’s because of their clan that Konoha’s border’s more of an oblong-ish oval than a circle like the founders had wanted, well too bad they’re going to have to deal with it, not like they’re alive to complain in the first place.   
She plops her butt down on the porch and watches as figurative sparks fly in the midst of battle.   
Her sister’s nearly a goddamn prodigy(No matter what that turd says her sister will always be the best, even if his brother made chunin by now) and she desperately wants to butter her ass up like no tomorrow but, she can’t really say that when she’s getting her ass handed on a golden platter. Now, Kokai’s holding her ground pretty well against her forty something granny, but that old bag of bones has thirty years of experience on her, counting in the fact that Ichika has fought in and survived two wars, she’s pretty damn skilled when it comes to fighting, that or she’s the cat of luck.  
Kokai’s wooden tanto stabs up in an arch, nearly jams itself into her grandma’s armpit but it’s rolled away by a fist. She smirks, weaves herself around like a viper and snaps at Ichika’s back, eyes widening she skitters back. The woman she was fighting a second ago flitters into the air as wisps of chakra, another solid grandma floats out from behind a bush, making poor Sakura shit bricks from fright.   
“Your genjustu’s improved Ko-chan.” She gloats as she slides on her brass knuckles. “Now, taijutsu.”  
One second she’s there and the next a fist is pounding into Kokai’s chakra coated forearm. The sword spears up to her neck, she leans back by a hair’s width and it sails past. She yanks on her out reached arm and slams it onto her knee like a sandwiched kick, effectively shattering the sword out of her grasp, a snap of bone echoes through the air.   
‘Kokai’ disappears with a handful of chakra.   
Another grandma reveals herself like a curtain falling from a statue, the other one dissipates.“Not too shabby, the sound is there and the feel of flesh but-” She throws a punch to the right of her. “-You forgot the bones and the feel of the sword-” The blob of air gasps and her curtain falls, she scrambles away. “-Oh?”  
Kokai wheezes from the force of her blow, her tanto scattered on the ground after her half planned escape. Face flushed she solidifies another sword with her chakra, feet wobbles and light scatters around her eyes.   
Their grandmother frowns. “Alright, pause it there.”  
Kokai straightens and her flush melts back into her skin, eyes dull with half a conscience. Another Kokai steps out of thin air as if there was an invisibility pocket that she magiced up, eyes bleary, she sways a little, footing just off enough to send her crashing down right into her grandmother’s arms- wait did her grandma move again? She was on the opposite side of the yard!  
“Whiplash?”   
She nods from her grandmother’s arms


	4. Duckbutt tsundere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one I wrote sometime in the beginning of this massive rewrite, the story was heading in a very different direction back then.

Non canonical 

\----------

She turns on the balls of her feet, sand flying into her sandals and between her toes. It was unbearably hot as usual in Konoha, each gust of wind smacking into her face like opening the car door in hot Californian sun. She wipes at her jaw and groans, beads of sweat dribbles down her neck.

She turns into the market district, the putrid scent of fish slapping her across her face, it was akin to an old man’s foot dipped in sweat and left to brine in piss. Her jacket sleeves stick to her biceps like honey to paper, a feeling that she unfortunately is very accustomed to. She swerves around a couple of carts, careful not to step on anyone’s foot. People are packed together like sardines in this bacon thin street, every once in a while there’d be a group huddled together, giggling and jeering at people passing by. Venders howled at the top of their lungs, preaching their good to the money bags passing by. They’d set out plastic mats, each one stained to shit, fresh carcasses piled on top of each other like some sick game of Jenga. Flies sucks the fish clean of blood, infesting it with the next generation of pests. Kokai swam through the crowd as fast as her little legs could go. Something pink burned at her nostrils, like silken honeydew it stabbed at her eyes. She grimaces, covering her nose with her jacket’s collar. ‘Jeesh, someone _really_ _loves_ their cologne.’ 

Luckily for her, her destination is right around the corner. It sits between the wet market and the shinobi district, a quaint little bakery on the edge of the street. The bakery didn’t look like much, its walls didn’t tower over you or was obnoxiously bright. Instead they were a gentle chalk green, a drop of white in a sea of reds. Horn flowers slipped around the metal pipings, wrapping around them like Christmas ribbons. The windows were polished to mirrors and she could practically hear the squeaks of glass. Some battered old sign juts out from the wall, looking more like driftwood than anything worthwhile. She squints up at it, it reads ‘Five spring bakery’. She’d asked around what it’d meant, why _five_ , why _spring,_ why the hell did we even open a bakery? Turns out they were just too lazy to make the damn pastries themselves and ‘five spring bakery’ just sounded nice, ‘rolled off the tongue real smooth’ apparently, all that tells her is that her clan is full of senseless, lazy, nutsacks.

Kokai huffs and strides up to the door, wooden with a tiny square window on top. She grabs the handle and yanks on it, it squeaks open pitifully like stepping on a mouse’s tail, the weight of it never quite right. She walks up to the counter, “Hey aunty!”

“Ah, Ko-chan dear!”

Aunty was a short little granny, as unassuming as a crumbly cookie. Her skin is seasoned like well-oiled leather and her hair was swept up into a bun at the top of her head. No one really knows what Aunty’s name is, and only a select few knew who she was before the clan, but she’s a veteran, no doubt about it. Her hair might be white but her back didn’t curve and her hands never shook.

“You’ve got a few hairs on your jacket sweetheart, here, let me get for you.”

And age never dulled her either, still as sharp as a whistle.

“Oh! Thanks Aunty! Don’t worry, I’ll get it!” She laughs, making sure her head tilts in just the right way. She plucks the pink strands from her jacket, keeping Aunty in her peripheral. “Have you seen big sis? I need some help with my hair.”

“She’s at her little studio again,” Aunty chuckles, a tad too sweet. She clasps her hands behind her back and rounds her shoulders. “Now you better go now, or you’ll be late.”

“Alright, thanks Aunty!” Kokai smiles, turning to leave. Her back tingles. She drops her smile when her feet touches the roof, it was nice of her to exchange pleasantries. It was pretty straight forward from there on, take a left here and turn right there and soon enough you got yourself plopped right in front of the Uzushiro district. Well, it was more like the Haruno district to be honest, there were only around 20 official Uzumaki’s living in Konoha, all of which are huddled here with the Harunos, being island clans and all.

[Sakura Haruno][Age 5][January 22]

Sakura sighs, scrubbing her hands raw under the faucet, the water like porcupine against her skin. She stands up on her tippy toes, slaps off the tap and wipes her hands on her (sadly)brand spanking new shirt. She tip toes out the academy’s toilet, carefully side-stepping bits and pieces of toilet paper and dodging the slime green walls. It smelled like an old man’s fart in here, not that she’d know what that smells like, it was more like curdled milk dipped in piss and coated with shit stained peperoni. Which is too say, it smelled like ass. Sakura heaves, reaching the end of the tunnel and sucking in that sweet, sweet freedom.

Do you know what freedom smells like? Because it doesn’t smell like ass.

She trudges along the pebbled path, counting each crunch. It was the special kind of pebbles, the _ninja kind_ , the ones that crunched _extra_ loud so you could hear if someone was trying to butcher you. She hums under her breath, keeping her eyes in front of her.

_Crunch-runch_

“Hey.”

Sakura turns on her heels, hands twitching towards her pocket. She blinks, tugging at her shirt. “Ah it’s you, um… Sasugey, right?”

“It’s Sasuke.” He announces, stuffing his hands in his pockets and trots towards her.

He looks like a girl; he’s got this rose white skin and long silken locks, his eyes are clear drums of liquorish and his nose is as straight as a kunai. He’s got the same shirt as her, but his was fit to size where hers had to be tied back, he almost seems to drown in his fine fitted shirt, the thing obscuring almost all of him. He strides towards her dignified, his shoulder pulled back, head held straight, and face half hidden behind his collar.

Sasuke might be the son of the richest clan in Konoha but he’s the poorest boy she’d ever seen.

He looks dejected, robbed even.

“Here” He takes out a piece of paper, holding it out for Sakura to take.

She blinks and takes it from his hands, tugging at her shirt. He steps away like the mere sight of her burns him, scurrying away calmly. She lets him go, opting instead to read what was in the paper.

It’s blank. There’s nothing on it.

She huffs like how a snake might hiss and crumbles it in her palm, flinging it against a tree. She scrapes at her neck and drops down into a squat, swiping it up into her pocket. Her sister said it’s bad to litter.

The bells rings, a racoon’s screech amidst the sea.

‘Hecking Uchiha. Probably planned it.’ She grumbles, trudging her way to class. ‘What did I do to him anyways. Never even seen his face before, ugly buttcrack.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if you can see it but this fic was originally gonna be a really dark fic, not like it isn't gritty not for what I've got planned but I guess the fic is more subtlety dark than that in your face stuff I had before.


	5. Chapter 5

Not canon as in events, but canon in info   
\--  
Ichika massages her temples. “Sa-chan go to your room, take your food with you.”  
Sakura nods, her neck stiff with crazy ants in her guts. She takes her plate of almost untouched food and spoon, heart jittering like a sugar high, breath frozen in the endless thick cutting air between the argument. She doesn’t know how it got like this, ponders over it as she pads up their stairs in fear, is this what war feels like? Face numbing terror racking through every fibre of her muscles?   
\---  
She pauses at the turn of the stair well.  
“The Empyreans are privileged-! How can’t you see it!? You’re an Earth-walker for God’s sake!” The voice is high on the edge of delirious anger. “Open your eyes! How can you be so blind to the inequality between us!? You work in intelligence and most of all an Earth-walker! You’re in on clan politics, in on clan gossip and in on the statistics!”  
She lets out a snarl. “That does not warrant you to discriminate against them girl! Each layer has their problems so don’t think that a layer has it better than the others! It’s to keep the damn balance and it serves the purpose well doesn’t it?” Her voice goes up a pitch at the end in rage.   
“We- we’re the ones discriminating?” She coughs out a laugh, mean and sharp. “If anything they’re the ones discriminating against us! Are you blind? Who’s older here, me or you!?” She can hear the scorn bleed through her words. “Don’t you attend clan meetings!? Can’t you see that half the problems that we have to deal with is cuz’ they failed to do their goddamn job!? Cleaning up after rich pigs isn’t a Subterranean’s job! That’s what the Empyreans are there for! They deal with the top and we deal with the bottom! We shouldn’t be the only ones doing the dirty work! Do they think we don’t handle politics down there too!?”  
“Damn it girl! Open your damn ears and stop yabbering!” her voice reeks of mind buzzing fury, only the earth-walker in her keeping her calm enough to formulate sentences. “I said to you over and over that we all have our issues! Yes I’m an earth walker but does that mean all I do is sit on my ass and talk all day!? We’re putting our lives on the line every time we speak to any of you damned layers!”  
“I-” Kokai spits it out like a swear. “I- Just.” She swears under her breath. “-I, I’m leaving for the academy.”  
There’s a short moment before she feels the door crash shut, a shock wave echoes throughout the walls and floor. She hovers between the safety of her room and the war zone downstairs, foot swaying between the two like a hammock, her fingers grip around her plate. She scarfs down the rest of her food.   
It’s seven, the academy starts at ten.  
The wood against her feet is cool as she descends the stairs, plate heavy in her hands like a promise, silence whispers in her ears like the fallout of war. She peeks at the door and winces when she sees the forming cracks in it’s frame. Their grandma is slumped in their kitchen chair, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose.   
She sighs as Sakura nears her, turning away from her prodding grandchild, she speaks, voice nasally like a stretched rubber band. “Sa-chan. Do you? She-” She strains out each word like a wail, “-forgot her lunch, can you be a good girl and bring it to her please? I have to go in early today, be careful outside okay?” She rises from her chair face still hidden from Sakura. “Don’t forget to, wear your seals.“ Even as she walks towards the stairs she makes sure the child can’t see her face, as if the motion could hide her tear ridden voice, as if it could hide they way her throat pinches against her will.   
Sakura blinks as Ichika disappears up the stairs, stomach rolls with corrosive acid. 

Their house didn’t feel so warm anymore.

*~ [ERROR] ~*  
[We are currently experiencing an interruption in our normal broadcast, please stay tuned while our trained technicians resolve this issue.]

“I-” She leans back into her chair, face in her palms like a defeated statue. “-I’m, I wouldn’t think that the academy trainers would condone such behaviour from their colleges but, I-” It almost seems like she’s hiding in her hands. “-I, you mother, she… Hanako loved you and she- she said it in her letter that,” she forces it out like how she’s forcing the tears in. “She knew you’d be like your father and she never wanted you to go down that path, she didn’t want you to be- to be another Hatake- She, she said that every time she saw him at the hospital that his eyes were dead, like a machine and she’s- she was scared.”   
Kokai looks to the side with her face twisted into a pained squint, like a cat reminded of its trauma, like a lid barely holding onto the container full of steam.


	6. Things from chapter three

Canon-ish?  
\--  
She makes a ‘gimme gimme’ motion with her arms outstretched, a sheepish grin lights up her face and then it drops. Sakura frowns in realisation. “Oh, right.”  
“My femur’s fine, I can put weight on it, see?” He bends his right leg like a one legged squat.   
“Yeah but–” She wrinkles her nose. “–you can’t just do that, even if you get healed with medical ninjutsu it still needs a lot of rest.”  
“I can lift 50 kilos and you’re barely heavier than a twig.”  
“But mini fractures!” Sakura’s eyes widen as a pout start to form. “The book says that medics don’t heal all of it at once so they don’t end up giving you cancer!”   
“Sakura,” He shushes. “I’m fine, I’ve been given the clear by medics to move around, my femur is fine, all I need to wait for is my muscles to heal over.”   
“But, I, you shouldn’t strain it–”  
“And the exercise will speed things up, I know my limits Stary, I’m not going to pull an Itachi on you.”  
“I– Okay…” A pout stays on her lips as she grudgingly agrees, if her brother snaps his femur like a tic tac then worse case scenario, they rush back to their clan compound for people to check it over, half her clan are medics so it should be fine. That made him happy somehow as he squats down for her to climb abroad, which she gingerly does, she monkeys around him and tucks her bony chin against his high collared shirt, his short ponytail scratches at the side of her ear. With her piggybacking like a potato sack on her brother’s back, there’s more thoughts bouncing around her head than she wants to admit, especially when they drift towards the topic of family, her family.  
She knows it’s not normal, at least outside her clan, to have a half your family be adopted. When your family’s full of either black or white hair, then boom there’s a splotch of pink which is 100% natural and not dyed no matter what some may suggest, it’s kind of like an ice filled bitch slap (for her at least). And she hates it– She closes her eyes and try to drown out the bustling rumble of the Haruno compound, each shriek of childish giggles sends waves goosebumps etching up her spine. – hates that she doesn’t want it any other way, hell, she’s glad even; maybe it’s the fact she sees a blue haired worker kiss his green eyed wife, or the fact that her not quite tan skin and eerie green eyes make the woman wince and redirects her husband, kiss him on his cheeks and tell him it’s nothing. Or maybe, it’s when she meets a nice red haired man who has the same nose as her, maybe, just maybe, she’s let her thoughts wonder too far and now they have as much value as flaming bull crap.  
But what if it isn’t?  
“Nii-chan?”   
He hums.  
“What was my mom like?”   
She hears his tone shift and doesn’t know what to make of it.   
“My Aunty?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Well…” He walks through the compound gates and the thick forest that coats inner Konoha like a barrier. “She was hot headed and passionate about cooking, even more passionate about fighting, and loved her family more than she loved herself.” The packed down path opens to pebbled streets and townhouses stretch on in rows like a power grid, so ridged, so unnatural. “She liked sweets and hated spice, hated having to wear glasses and couldn’t wave a genjustu to save her life.” He takes a left turn. “She was nice, always wore a coat even if it rained fire and brimstones, was as mulish as your grandma.”  
“Did she have pink hair?”  
Inko sighs. “Sakura.” There’s a twinge of disappointment in his voice and it stabs into Sakura’s heart, he draws out an inhale, she’s glad she can’t see his face. “You’ve seen the photographs.”  
“Yeah but,” She grumbles, “how can you expect me to believe that? What I was told was more like the backstory for some edgy protagonist.”  
“Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.” He retorts, voice in a pinched grimace. “Trust me, there’s a lot of things that belong only in Icha Icha, at best that story is consistent with its character names.”   
“Like what?”   
“Well if I told you I’d be sentenced to death.”   
“…Nii-chan that’s very shady.”  
“I’m a ninja Stary, everything we do is ‘shady’.”  
She sighs. “Nevermind, I can actually hear the air quotes.”  
He chuckles.   
\--  
Her sister lets out a smattering cough, she sniffs a few times before curling into herself. Their grandmother tuts at the state of her granddaughter, she soaks the towel in cold water and wrings it out, folds it back into a neat little square and plops it back on her granddaughter’s burning forehead. She sighs. “You hangin’in there alright, Ko-chan?”  
Kokai lets out another fit of coughs but nods a little, cheeks flushed she tries to push out words from a throat beyond wrecked.   
“Nee-chan? I’ve got corn soup.” Sakura sticks her head around the door and holds up a can uncertainly. “Do you want chicken in it? I can put chicken–”  
“–No you won’t Sa-chan, I don’t want you to go anywhere near the stove you hear me?” Ichika huffs and rises from Kokai’s bed.   
“But it’s just soup.” She whines– with dignity of course.   
Ichika glances down at her, unimpressed. “The last time you were in the kitchen Sa-chan, I told you to watch the pot and to call me if it boiled over, you never called me and when I came back you broke three shelves and everything on those shelves.”  
“But the food was fine!”  
“It had glass in it.”   
“…I don’t remember that.”   
The woman’s eyebrows shoots up into her hairline. “I never said you couldn’t help Sa-chan, just that I don’t want you touching the stove ya know?”   
\--  
“Fifty one.”  
Sakura grunts as her arms tremble up for the fifty first time, it feels like lord hell man himself pissed acid down her bones.   
“Fifty two.”  
Again she lowers her body, arms tremble under her weight, sweat pastes her t-shirt to her skin like curdled milk, dusty and crusty like no one’s business.  
“Fifty three.”  
A war cry tears itself out of her throat, she grits her teeth and wanes her poor joints.   
“It’s a push-up Sakura. A push up.” He deadpans. “It sounds like you’re constipated.”  
“But I can’t!”  
“You can either complete that push up or eat wind for lunch.”  
Like some starved dog her eyes fire up at the mention of meals, she strains her poor noodle arms one final time, arms straighten as her life flashes before her eyes. “Fif– Fifty four! Her arms give out under her, she lets out a small ‘omf’ before curling into a pathetic ball of aching sadness. “I think I broke it.”  
Inko hauls her up by the waist, swings her over his shoulder like a rice sack and walks back to the porch. “You’ll have to do more than that if you want to survive genin-hood.” He says in an easy tone.   
“I’m gonna stop when I graduate anyways…”  
He smirks. “You do know that–”  
“Inko!” A Haruno bursts through the front gate, she bends over, face red and breathes pulsing a mile per second. “We–” She wheezes. “–We got a problem.”  
His face displays ‘what the tiddy fuck’ as he spins to face her, eyebrows raised and questioning.   
“The kids, they got the bug– the chakra one.”   
“What am I supposed to do?” His face crinkles in disbelief. “I’m not a medic-nin.”  
“Aunty Ren’s off on a mission. We need you to get the message to her so get your birds ready–” She holds out a tightly wrapped scroll. “–Kinda urgent.”   
His face smoothens, with a nod he places the Sakura rice sack down. He cuts his thumb with a flick of chakra, flashes through some hand signs and slams his palm on the ground. Lines erupt under his hand like centipedes as chakra flushes out of the seal, melding into a falcon– a very confused falcon– the bird blinks, a piece of meat hanging indignantly out of it’s beak. They look to Inko, then to Sakura and then to Sumire, then at the scroll in the teen’s hand, it clicks. “You just had to summon–”   
“I need you to deliver this to Ren–”   
They gobble down the piece of meat. “Well hello Inko-kun, it’s a lovely day don’t you think?” They draw out and picks at a feather. “Why yes I am doing swell, can’t have this lovely day go to waste can I? My my! I was just going out for some snacks myself before I was yanked here.”  
His face drops into a flat line. “Just take the damn scroll and go.”  
“Why yes I would love to stay for some food since you interrupted my lunch! How kind of you!” They patter towards Sumire and takes the scroll offered to her, with one claw full they turn to their summoner, face somehow conveying their disgruntlement. “Wouldn’t kill you to have some manners.”  
“Wouldn’t kill you to have some dignity.” With an eye roll he stands up and pats at his now dusty pants. “Just get it to Ren before sundown, tell her it’s an emergency.”  
The bird stares unblinkingly at their summoner.   
“And you’re welcome to join us for lunch.”  
“Aye aye captain! Save some bird for me!” They chirp, readies their wings and lifts off with a burst of smoke, leaving behind a vacuum. It’s silent for a second before the booming ‘fwoosh’ hits them like a five star blow out.   
Sumire squints at the sky, the sassy bird already out of sight. “Wow, she’s a spicy one.”  
“It’s a he.”  
The teen shrugs. “How would I know, you never summon them for jacksh–“  
“–The frog.” Inko runs his hand through his bangs as his eyes narrow pointedly. “What’s this virus about? I thought we had it vaccined.”  
“I don’t know.” She walks over and takes a seat on their raised porch. “Apparently it’s an evolved version, well, either that or it’s a new strain.” A scratch at her nose and she give a glance at the weeping child. “Is she alright?”   
“Ignore her, she’s just being whinny.”  
Sakura grunts from the floor, snatching some dirt and disgruntledly chucks them in his general direction.   
He gestures his head at the now misplaced pile of dirt. “As you can see.”  
“Gotta work on that aim squirt.” Sumire snorts as her cousin hands her a bottle of water. “Thanks, we’re not sure how they got it but it’s all academy kids. No idea why.”   
“Just the academy?”  
“Yeah.” She chugs down half the bottle. “No way it’s natural, the non-academy ones are fine, just the ones from the academy.”  
“Wait what?” Sakura butts in, her eyes widen in concern. “People from the academy?”  
“Yep.” She pops the ‘p’ and re-caps the bottle. “You know someone squirt?”  
“Yeah, my sister.”  
Sumire sucks in air between her teeth and lets it sit in her cheeks. “Green eyes black hair right?”  
Inko nods. “Wears a turtleneck twenty four seven.”  
“Oh!” She grins. “So you’re her little sister!”   
“Yeah I am,” She says, eager to get back on topic, “Have you seen her?  
\--  
“Your shop?” Sakura tone is incredulous as she squints at Sumire’s face. “It’s granny Nano’s.”  
“I’m her daughter.” Her grin turns fierce. “You wouldn’t’ve seen me around much since I had back to back missions, but guess who’s off duty?”  
Sakura blinks and proceeds to slowly circle the teen, inspecting every cell of her being. “You look fine to me.”  
“She chose to retire.” Inko corrects, he tilts his head to the side and feels a bottle graze the side of his bangs.   
“Not ‘retire’ it makes me sound old.”  
\--  
He smirks. “Then since you’re here, it would be great help if you stayed for a bit and correct Sakura’s form, you’d do that for her correct.”  
“That’s not a question.” She sighs and stretches her arms over head.   
“I’m just giving you back your thunder Sumire.”  
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah and my ass cheeks are zombies.” She grins at Sakura, ocean eyes swirls like the depth of trenches. “You ready to spar squirt?”  
“Please don’t.”  
“Too bad.”  
Inko sighs from the shade of the porch. “Don’t kill her Sumire, you’re trying to help her, not dispatch.”  
“Oh I know that.” She sing songs as she tests her fists. “Non-lethal, no chakra, just a spar.”  
Sakura grimaces and steps into the sun. She doesn’t like the sound of this, but her brother’s here so it should be fine, right?   
Sumire smirks but her eyes are as blank as an interrogator. “Alright Sakura, come at me with lethal intents but don’t try any weird medical tricks, I’d like my nerves to be in the right place.” She pauses to let the girl nod. “Which means you can use chakra, no ninjutsu, moulding is fine and weapons are fair game. We clear?”  
The girl nods, hands on one of her pig tails, fingers hooked around the hair band.   
Inko smiles. “Begin.”  
Sakura yanks her hair tie off in one swoop, leaps back and with both hands on it, she aims it like a crossbow at the woman, sweat dripping down cold. Drums beat in her ears as her nerves buzz with something electrifying. Sumire doesn’t look impressed.  
“Alright squirt, here’s your fist lesson. Don’t let the adrenaline get to your head.” She walks towards her casually as if they were lounging around. “You might feel great but that’s the point of it. I’m pretty darn flattered that you’re scared of fighting me, really I am, but–” She’s five feet in front of the girl when chakra begins to coat her hand like honey. “This will get easier with time and as you fight more, the chemical is not here to make you stronger, it’s here to keep you alive.” She smirks. “In other words it reduces your braincells.”  
“…Boo.” A twitch of her finger has Sakura flinching out of her skin, the teen cackles. “Oh that never gets old, welp, on with the lesson!”  
Sakura pouts in concentration, takes aim and fires. Sumire dodges it with a casual tilt of her head, still smirking and eyes still blank, she hums at the crack the band makes as it jams into the brick. “Try it again, but with more chakra.”  
“Okay.” It comes out breathy and quivering, her hand fumbles, jittering as she tries to tug her other hair band off.   
“You’ve got to stop that flight or fight response Sakura.”   
“Right.” She pulls the hair tie off but her hands are still jittering. “Right.” She takes aim again with a shuddering breath. “Right.” She aims it like a crossbow, chakra weaves itself around the band without a thought.   
“You’re gonna need more than that.”  
“Right.” Her chakra coats the band like gloss as it bloats with energy.   
“Sharpen it squirt, you’re trying to kill here– I mean look at me right now, if I was out on the field I would have been fired for letting someone take free shots at me.”   
Sakura nods and squints at the band, willing her chakra to be sharper, pointier, deadlier. “Fire?”  
“I don’t know squirt, I’m just your usual enemy nin that lets you take free shots, don’t mind me.”  
She glares pass the point where the band is aimed at.  
“Just shoot it at me–”  
She fires.  
It takes off without much fuss and honestly, she didn’t know what she was expecting but it should at least sound…boomy? Maybe like a giant sonic boom? Or like a tiny sonic boom or just any boom? “Aw what.” She pouts at the band stuck in the plate of chakra. So it didn’t sound cool, look cool and is now embedded in Sumire’s chakra shield. Whoever said hard work gives results were obviously tripping balls when they said that, she’s been working on this for half a year and she still can’t get it to boom, not even a little ‘pew’ or something.   
“Pretty good  
\--  
“Well–” He straightens his high collar. “–If it’s anything like the chakra flu then it should be fine.”  
Her brother glances at her before he turns to the lavender haired girl. “Has a girl with black hair been admitted?”  
His cousin glances at him with a snort. “You’ve got to be more specific than that.”  
“Black waves, green eyes, short-ish, academy age and wears a turtleneck.” He pauses and adds. “And a haori.”   
With a sigh she stretches up, eyes hazed in concentration. “Turtleneck and haori?”  
He nods. “Pale green.”  
She sucks in air between her teeth and lets it sit in her cheeks. “Maybe. Did she have a pink pack?”   
He turns to Sakura and sees her nod, her face scrunched up in anticipation. “Yeah.”  
“I don’t know if she’s been admitted or not, but I saw her being carried somewhere on the way here, probably to the clinic. Looked like she fainted from a fever.” She pats his shoulder twice firmly. “Don’t know much more, sorry cousin.” With a wave she walks to their wooden gate and pushes it open. “Well, I’m off. Oh and, thanks for the water.”  
Inko nods goodbye and watches as she roof hops out of view, he turns to Sakura, face lights up with a casual smirk. “Looks like we’re going to make some porridge for your sister.”  
“Can I have a shower first? I’m really dusty.”   
Inko nods and waves her off pleasantly. “Get your crusty ass out of here, I’ll go make the porridge.”  
Sakura nods, arms too sore for a smile and drags her crusty dusty self out of their front yard and into their house. Their house is a big one compared to the rest of Konoha, but inside the Haruno compound it’s puny, there needs to be space for all those orphans they swipe off the streets after all. The dusty welcome mat greets her as she shuts the door behind her, her feet are bare against the scratchy fibres but she’s long since used to prancing around bare foot. She steps onto the genkan but hops back as if burnt. Granny Chichi’ll kill her if she got the floor dirty again. So she begrudgingly slides on her slippers and cringe at the feeling, basically the equivalent of sticking your foot into a mayonnaise jar and sticking that into a nice clean sock. Complete blasphemy. But she trudges on anyways because she’d rather sleep with a roof over her head.   
Their kitchen is dwarfish besides the overwhelming spill of couches and rugs, kind of like the body of a bobble head. A large table squats in the centre, kind of a faint coffee colour surrounded by various chairs, each with a different material; eight different types of materials if you want to be specific. The green wooden one with the kitted cushion is hers, it kind of makes her ass itchy so she ends up slotting it under the chair when she eats. The kitchen itself is pretty standard; white everything topped with dark wooden counters, knifes stuck along some poles, seals across various shelfs, you know, the usual.   
She shuffles across the room, each shuffle makes a dusty ‘sweech’ that makes her shoulders try to swallow her neck. The stairs are just in front of a hallway, both tucked behind a wall that divides the hallway and the living room, again, pretty standard. There’s no time to waste so she dashes up the stairs and down the hall, swerves into her bath room, hops into the shower and turns on the spray with a squeak.   
Now at this point you would expect to greet the water in your birthday suit, but you know what? Sakura is metal, there will be no birthday suits, no, only twerking braincells and fully clothed regrets.   
She sighs and slathers the soap bar over her wet t-shirt. “Well, at least it saves water, I guess.”  
After a semi satisfying scrub down of her training clothes, the girl emerges from the bathroom with minimal fog trailing after her. She shivers in her slippers hard enough that she doesn’t cringe at the wet squish from her steps. Only whimps shower with hot water and Sakura is a certified badass– at least as much of a badass as the spasming water heater allows.   
She vibrates all the way to her bedroom still wrapped in her wet, slightly less crusty training scrubs, because of course only whimps uses towels. Sakura sniffs and swipes at her dripping nose. “I’m a certified rebel damn it.”   
\--  
“Again.” His eyes narrow at her form, lips pressed into a flat line. “Keep your arms up, they’re there to protect your head so tuck in those chicken arms.”  
Sakura huffs out a growl, pushing her fist forward for the millionth time in a row. They feel like soggy spaghetti at this point, flopping back and forth at her brother’s demand, she better get rock hard pecks from this or else she’ll phone the manager. “I am!”   
“Lower. Feet out.”   
A stick jabs at her leg and grudgingly lower her centre of gravity. She pouts, punching the air again at his call. “Don’t you have a mission or something.”  
“Nice try.” A smile lights up his face, so disturbingly beautiful that she has to shield her eyes from the sparkles. “Which is why we’re moving onto sparing.”   
‘Cra–’ Wood swipes at where her throat was, she wheezes, his fist slamming into her solar plexus. She skitters back, wind lost in her throat.   
“Pay attention.” He’s smirking at her predicament, bastard’s probably enjoying tossing her around like a squeaky toy. “Remember what you’ve been practising all morning, keep your arms up, guard your ribs and head.” He unclips his katana from his belt, hand around the lip of its scabbard. Spine straightens like a dancer as he smiles like a murdering prince. “Begin.”   
The swear’s barely out of her mouth when he appears, scabbard jerks down onto her head, missing by an atom’s length. One word circles around her brain and one word only, run; she knows she can’t dream of even landing a hit, he’s too slippery for that. I mean he’s a jounin for fuck sake, he’d burry his head like an ostrich in shame if a pre-academy child landed a hit, not today dignity, not today.  
There’s no time for plans, adrenaline and sweat Purdue her being and with a yell she jams a punch into his leg, fist only meeting air. She ducks under his swing, face red with fear before falling to the side, legs shooting out like harpoons for his groin, feels it catch the hem of his shirt.   
Gotcha bitch.  
With a twist of her chakra they shirt sticks to her heels and she yanks, body twists like a hurricane to suck him into her fist. She grins. Victory. She’s slammed to the ground, snow puffs up around her and her stomach ripple with pain. Strained groans fall out of her as she clutches her sides, eyes clenched shut, her face twists in agony. He punched her so hard she might be shitting out her organs for days.  
“Commendable tactics, that pull was good but left you a bit too open.” He observes and clips his sword back on. “It would have worked on a genin but I wouldn’t recommend using it against a chunin, if it were anyone but me you’d be dead with a kunai in your liver.”   
She bites back a swear as tears drip down her cheeks. “I think-” A wheeze. “-think you broke me.”   
He shuffles near and doesn’t bother to cloak his steps, with a soft sound he pries away her trembling arms, eyes narrowing at her face. “Come on.” She’s pulled into his chest and lifted up in a teddy bear hold, face squished against his high collared jacket. “Want to know why we wear high collared shirts?”  
She nods against his shirt, cheeks hurt from her pained expression. It seems like everyone in her clan wears a high collared something, she’d asked her grandma but she just said it was because they wanted to hide their wrinkles. Her sister doesn’t have wrinkles so she doesn't know what that old pot was on about.   
“It’s because we have our clan seal on the back of our necks, you know, the one you get when you turn ten.” His smile bleeds through his tone as he navigates through their compound, unzips his jacket and tucks the shriveling girl inside.   
Sniffling, she replies. “But don’t I have one? I’m six though.”  
“That’s your clan marking Noodle arms, plus it’s not like it’s on your neck.”   
\----

He squints at the sun. “Alright, stop here.”  
Without a sound she collapsed into a boneless sludge, sweat melts into the snow and her resolve melts with it. “I did it!”  
“No you didn’t-” His face flatlines. “-We’re just pausing because I need to pick up your sister.”  
“Aw what!?”


	7. A whole ass chapter I chucke

“Aunty!” She squeals, launching off the door frame and latches onto the woman’s apron. “I missed you! And I didn’t miss _you_.” She sneers at the black blob hovering behind the corner and he sneers back with twice the menace, the little bastard even had the gale to smile at her sister right after! The _nerve_.

He trots as far as he can go on the genkan and smiles his best ‘gimme gimme’. “Onee-san, I learned some really cool shuriken tricks last week, would you like to see?”

“Oi!” She puffs up like a pissy feline from where she’s latched onto her aunty’s leg. “That’s _my_ sister!”

He spits back. “And that’s _my_ mother!” 

Kokai chortles a well practised muse as she eyes the two bantering rams face off in an epic skirmish of wit and tongue, they both circle the other, eyes latched on like ants. 

“Well don’t just stand there, come in!” Mikoto’s eyes crinkle like summer linen. “The food is not quite done, but it will only take a couple of minutes.”

Kokai taps the snow off her shoes and slides the door close behind her as she enters the uchiha residence. “I uh, got some new flowers for you.” She presents a bundle of volcanic carnations to Mikoto and smiles bashfully at her delighted gasp, the flowers are taken carefully from her grasp as if it were worth more than life itslef. “I thought maybe I could, y’know, change it up a little.”

Her aunty smiles and cradles the carnations in her arms. “Oh you shouldn’t have, that’s so sweet of you Ko-tan!” She reaches over to pinch her cheek with love, giggling when the girl grumbles in pain about aunties and their deadly pinchers. “I’ll go find my best vase!”

“Oh no you don’t have to- and she’s gone.” Her smile hardens into something sharp as she flicks the bickering little murderers on the foreheads, hard. “Sakura, put that down.”

Sakura pouts but lowers volume one nonetheless, damn it, her murder plan would have worked too. “Then what about Sasuke?”

“Sasuke-” She eyes the boy and his sparking ‘what about me?’ smile, his black shirt oddly crumples around the back and his pants are a bit too loose. “-take that out.”

He huffs and a katana scabbard falls down his pant leg, he wiggles it out. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

Her eyebrows are perpetually raised at how much bullshit a single Uchiha can pull out of their ass at any given moment, speaking off Uchiha, she should probably go in before the kids attempt murder again. She toes off her boots and places them next to her sister’s as she steps onto the genkan, the wood worn beneath her feet. Two bickering ducklings trail after her as she wanders to the kitchen, the aroma of rosemaries and blends of exotic spice flows throughout the house, drizzling over like light sweet autumn in a mist of rain. She sniffs the air and her heart aches with the effort of denying delusions, it’d be so easy to just slip right back into that ritual, back into denying loss by curling into her genjutsus. A glance out a window steels her nerves.

Kokai passes the study and pauses at the open door. 

Mikoto threads around papers stacked ceiling high towards her dozing husband. He’s draped over the wooden table, ink flowing freely out of a spilled jar and over his half filled forms, even a fool would know Fugaku practically lived in his study, and if they didn’t? Well, the stale plates and bowls speak for themselves. She wipes away the pool of ink and tuts at the state of his inkstained face, a smile lights her face with something fond, thoughts drifting. She takes care not to wake her husband as she wipes away the ink on his face with a spare napkin, combs back his hair into something more presentable and re-adjusts his clothes. The lines on his face are soft with age and sags with sleep, he looks at peace like this, in his home shrouded in wisps of his wife’s fretting and children’s bicker. 

Her aunty shakes his shoulders. “Come on lo’v, I’ve made dinner.”

He stirs, eyes bloodshot and nose clogged, letting out a drawn out sniff. 

Kokai turns away as they exchange soft words of reassurance, the tender love in his eyes only meant for his wife, her affectionate sighs reserved for her bleary eyed love. They deserved their movements; deep down they both knew about his fate, that the stress would take his heart if a mission doesn’t take his breath.

She steers the little ducklings towards the garden where she knew her uncle kept his koi alongside the training logs. After She herds them to the back garden and sighs at the overgrowth, they were all too busy and her uncle had been too thick headed to hire a gardener, no one was good enough to touch his fragile baby apparently. She knew it was his pride and joy but still- two murderous ducklings jump off the porch and roll onto plows of battered snow dusted moss- to let it grow into the house is a bit much. Kokai reaches for her chakra, speaks to the familiar hum in her coils and molds it into glowing shears. 

Good thing she knows a trick or two. 

Sakura scowls as Sasuke snatches a stray twig and stabs it where her head was. She rolls but his legs keep her in place so she jams her fist between his ribs,

feeling him wheeze. A fist sails past his nose and he falls back in his efforts to dodge, he grunts, skittering back. She smirks and rolls back from her shoulder, her hand full of pebbles. “Rain of pain!”

Rocks rain down like bullets and he barely makes it out alive. He deflects a few with his stick, ducks beneath her kick and guts her with his elbow. She yelps, nausea rushing up her skin. 

“One thousand deaths!” He pushes on with no mercy, raining down on her with brazen fists. 

Sakura retreats in haste like a beaten crow and observes him from the sidelines, her breath erratic, ribs aching from his erratic punches. 

“Scaredy cat!” He shrieks, slashing up at her as she stumbles away. 

Her eyes blaze with fury. Screw him! “I’m not!” Her legs bends, releases with thrice the force and crashes into Sasuke’s middle like a bullet train. He goes down and her world spins, it takes a second too long for his rising legs to register -‘Crap!’- He jams his feet into her stomach like a soccer ball and _throws_. 

Her innards lurch at the sudden contact and her spine rattled with pain. She coughs out a wet gurgle from the ground. A stick is placed on her neck and Sasuke stands there in all his four feet glory, looking quite like a gambler who won the jackpot. 

“You may have won this battle, but you’ll never win the war.” She rasps out, a little more than tempted to spit in his smug mug. 

“You’ll-“ His knees weaken as he collapses on top of her. “Never understand the taste of victory.” The air leaves him and he’s as boneless as the girl underneath him. 

They sludge into the ground as they try to catch their breath, voices whistling from the force of their blows. She coughs out a sludge of spit and bile and wipes it off her chin, eyes twisted towards the lowering sun. The gentle snips of twigs and leaves merge with their rasping breath like silk against silk.

Her lips twist as she heaves the weight off her chest. 

He blinks as he’s rolled off her torso and into sheets of crispy cold moss. His insides feel like they’ve been pulverised by a beaver and stuffed with lime. “What happened.”

“Nothing much.” She grasps at the lowering sun aimlessly. “You?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Well it didn’t sound like a question.” 

“Well it doesn’t sound like you’re very happy.” Sasuke starts with a frown. “You threw rocks at me.”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t sound very sorry.”

“Sorry.”

“Stop it. Don’t say sorry if you don’t mean it.”

She rolls over onto her sides, eyes to her sister snipping away at the bushes. “So? You say alot’a things that you don’t mean.”

“But when I say sorry I always mean it.”

“...Well I’m not you.”

“Was it the test?” He starts. “You’re going to be accepted even if you don’t score that high, and you can forget about that bet too if you don’t like it.”

She falls onto her back and words don’t come out of her throat. 

“The results will be out soon so you’ll only have to wait a few days. I heard they’ll put it up on monday.” He grasps at the frozen moss beneath his hand. “And it’s not like you’ll fail or something, I can even make sure that we get into the same class- nii-san says that he’ll make it up to me for ditching me and he has a lot of favours he can call in.”

Her eyes fall shut.

“It’s been a month and you’re getting more and more moody, I swear the academy’s not hard so you can stop worrying, plus we’ll be mid years entries so there’ll be lots of clan kids- you like bets right?” 

She hears his mouth open before the sound comes out. “I have to visit soon.”

The words die in his throat. “Oh.”

They trail into silence.

Sakura sighs and picks up a stray leaf, it’s from the bush that surrounded the plum blossom, she wasn’t sure what it was called but it's green and has a magenta underbelly.

A glance at the surrounding garden has her awed at its sudden transformation.

The spindly bushes have been waved back into neat little circles; from their unnatural shape and the weird angles the twigs bend at, she assumes that her sister up and fused it back on after she’d cut it. Her uncle’s precious flowers are left untouched as far as she sees, same for the trees, the plum blossom is still the centre piece and various wisterias are still encroaching on the pebbled koi pond. It’s a pretty sight. With the climate in Konoha, flowers and trees are in full bloom all year round, except for winter, and autumn, okay just two seasons but the weather’s still pretty nice…most of the time.

Okay so it might piss with rain on some days and all the others are humid as heck, but it’s still sunny...sometimes. 

She looks to her sister, who squats in front of a garden patch with a palm full of ash. Her sister squints at the budding tomatoes before she shrugs, throwing the ash onto the plants like dusting cocaine on pancakes, as you do.

“When are you going to go?” He rolls to his side and makes a bloated duck face, face not flushing one bit at his dwindling dignity.

Her mouth quirks up to a grin. “I dunno, next month?”

“But the academy starts next month!”

“We’re only gonna go for a day-” She wiggles her eyebrows. “-Why, you gonna be lonely?”

A scowl lights up his face like a pot boiling over and, _finally_ , a flush bleeds through his cheeks. “What! No! I’m really popular!”

“Girls don’t count ya know?”

“Yeah? Well then you don’t count either.”

“Not me!” She pouts with a huff. “The girls who make those googly eyes at you!” A pause and some thoughts later, she adds. “And boys, that blonde one always stares at you so I dunno.”

“Ew.” His nose wrinkles. “I saw him snorting dirt yesterday, no way I’m going near _him_.”

This halts Kokai in her steps as chakra in her palms crumble into ash. “Who’s snorting what now?”

“The blonde boy with blue eyes.” He begins with a wave of his hand. “You know? The one with the weird whisker lines on his cheeks.”

She blinks and squats back down. “Ahh, that one we’re not allowed to adopt.”

“Oh is that why aunty Ren was mad last week?” A push of her foot has Sakura sliding across the frosty moss, she smiles a guilty grimace at her sister’s disgusted look. “Did I get green in my hair?”

“No you slid across bird poo.” She cackles at Sakura’s panicked spasm. “Nope! You got green in your hair...And bugs.”

A shriek tears itself out of her throat and she slaps at her hair, trying to get the hell mites off, and it doesn’t help that Sasuke is snickering his ass off, no, it makes her feel quite bad indeed.

Which is why he’s going to feel even worse in the next two seconds.

It’s quite simple really, almost like flipping a pancake; just slide your arms under the body, square your shoulders, ready your quads and fling it as far as you can. Which in this case is the nice, cool koi pond, conveniently placed next to the turd for an epic 360 flipparo.

Yeah, how you feel about that you little bitch.

The splash and splutter of turd in water is angels in her ears, she’s almost tempted to throw a couple of branches in there for decoration, but she won’t because anymore and her grandma will have her lynched. Speaking of grandma.

“Nee-chan, when’s granny gonna come?”

Kokai stares at the darkening sky for a few seconds as she churns through advanced trigonometry; the sun is approximately 36 degrees from the ground, layer that onto the face of a clock will get her around nine but taking day light saving into account it will give her around six thirty. Matching that up with her grandma’s usual finishing times, it spits out the result of approximately forty minutes until her grandma’s arrival. She shrugs. “I don’t know, a while?”

A grin stretches across the young devil’s face as she snatches up a fist of dirt, bugs and...other nasties. A while’s plenty long enough. 

A glance at her fist has Sasuke paling like a chameleon, he gulps down fear induced saliva and clutches at his waist band. “…You don’t want to do this.”

She nearly pisses herself when a deranged cackle threatens to burst from her lips. “You will know pain.”

“No!” He scrambles out of the pond, sandals slides on the pebbles with a squeak as he falls flat on his ass oh so graciously. Water flushes down his face and he’s not sure if it’s pond water or cold sweat, he doesn’t know which one he prefers but at least he’s hands are still on his pants. “Nee-san! Help! Nee-san-!”

The older girl sighs, chakra fading back into her skin. “Sakura what are you-” A pause is all she can muster when she witnesses this...lawsuit in the making; her sister’s got her hands shoved up Sasuke’s shirt, poor boy’s screaming bloody murder as...whatever the hell that is tumbles out of his shirt. Now, if she was a responsible adult she would break this crime scene up, but she’s ten and tired of this bullshit so this case is being chucked onto the legal adults. She has a defence in court and for once she’d like to see someone else suffer-a shriek bursts out of Sasuke’s throat as Sakura smears more of it onto his shirt- alright nevermind that was a bluff. 

A shove with his fist has the demon off him at last, the scream doesn’t die in his throat, no, it just rises in pitch as if that’ll drive the devil off instead. She cackles in hysteria with her finger towards him like a prison sentence, there’s a delay, her face falls. “Sasuke I’m sorry I-”

It feels like he’s been near sighted since birth, and he’s just been fitted with a brand spanking new pair of glasses; the moon is clear under the wispy cotton clouds and he can make our every detail of a leaf five houses over, worms are spotted under the thick waves of flowers where he could never see before, translucent neon threads hums in Sakura, is that what chakra looks like?

His wet face brings him back to reality, a slurp from sniffing back snot has him bubbling even harder. “That’s new! You ruined my shirt!” He screeches, lunging for the damned demon’s head, hands outstretched he bares his teeth. How dare she! His brother gifted him that shirt for his birthday, top of the line merchandise brought with his brother’s hard earned money! He’ll have her head! 

An arm yoiks him back like an elastic band, he snarls and wriggles in her arm like a deranged hound, tears staining his shirt a darker blue. It’s frustrating, seeing everything but your body’s just too damn slow to keep up, he could have dodged this arm if he was just a little faster, a little more agile, a little better. If he was just a little better, justice would have been served to that annoying pot headed demon.

“You two…” Kokai scowls, face darkening with every second. 

Sakura swallows and an unsure chuckle blubber from her lips. “YEah..?” Her voice cracks midway. 

Sasuke smirks at the demon’s predicament, heart swelling with satisfaction that brought the cat back to life.   
  
  


She’s in for it now. 


	8. ch 4 parts

the personalities are not really right, take them with a grain of salt  
\----  
“I heard you took the shinobi academy entry test.” Inko says, casually ducking under some ninja wire. His eyebrows raise in a picture of playfulness but his eyes are stone cold.   
Sakura waits for him to elaborate but he just looked at her expectantly. She didn’t know what to say, how was she supposed to answer a statement? It’s like trying to fit a square into a triangle. She shrugs and raises her foot carefully over a seal, not sure what it does but it’ll probably skewer her like a kabab.   
The silence grates at her nerves.   
She sighs. “I did, a week ago.” She glances at him for a reaction, there’s none. “…I’m pretty sure I’ll get in.”   
He nods and Sakura’s brain threw a party, it didn’t last long though. “You know you will struggle right?”  
“Struggle?” She stops to stare at him incredulously. “But, I can lift more than Sasuke can in a day and I’ve won a lot of fights-”  
“Genetically, you are at a disadvantage.” He steamrolls over her, leaving no room for rebuttal. “Your main advantages are in chakra control and textbook knowledge, the latter will be learned with time which leaves chakra control as your only advantage. The Harunos have different practises than the average combat shinobi clan, which is what you’re up against.”  
She grits her teeth and catches up to her brother.   
“Think carefully Sakura, why is there two distinct academies when they both produce the same result?”  
“Because.” She pushes her tongue against her teeth as annoyance spreads through her chest. “Politics and genetic differences and the amount of training. But I still don’t see how this has anything to do with me entering the shinobi academy.”  
“Kunai-!” Inko screams, yanks the girl back by her shirt and watches the blades buries themselves to the hilt. He sighs and smacks her across the head. “I told you to watch your footing.”  
“Sorry.” She pouts and rubs at the stinging palm print. “But you didn’t have to smack me you know?”  
“Would you rather I stab you?”   
“No.”  
He sighs, feeling his hair grey. “I took you out here for training, not for you to leave without a head.”  
“Can we leave then?” She perks up and winces at the look on her brother’s face. “I mean sorry?”  
Inko slides a palm down his face before straightening, he points to a space between two branches and turns to her, face a bit too pensive. “Analyse.”   
“…It’s…” She squints. She can see the flicks of light that bounces off it, it’s a bit too dull to be considered ninja wire but it’s shiny enough to be some kind of wire. The wire coils around the branch like a snake, maybe it’s there to slice a poor fool’s feet open or snag someone’s shoe, but it’s not even barbed enough to get through a shoe sole so why is it warped like that? It’s the colour that throws her off the most, it’s beige, the colour of most seal paper, and there’s no way it’s paper either, you can’t convince her that seal paper that thing could tightly warp around a branch thrice.  
Sakura grunts in frustration and spits out a half hearted answer. “I dunno, paper yarn?”  
“That’s explosive wire.” He tilts his head like a plotting cat. “Why don’t you try collecting it?”   
Her head snaps to him in disbelief. “Huh?”  
“Try collecting it.” He repeats with tilt of his chin.   
“Nii-san with all due respect I think my rank is not suited for this task-”  
“Sakura don’t think you can use that to get out of it, you’re not even in the ranks.” He gives her a light shove towards her impending doom. “I’ll be watching, do not fret.”  
She glances at her brother and takes a hesitant step forward, sweat gathers along her fingers and she wipes it on her shirt. It’s okay, she can do this, her brother is five feet away and he wouldn’t let anything happen to her… She think. Worst case scenario she’ll get blown to smithereens and be forever lost to the world- oh no oh no oh crap a cake mix ohhhhhh she’s done for, she looked the devil in the eye and said ‘save me a front row seat to my own funeral.’ It’s okay she’ll just cut the branch off, yeah, yeah she can do this.  
“You know how to disarm the seals, you’ve seen it a hundred times.” Her brother doesn’t seem too concerned from his very safe spot. “It’s simple really.”  
––

“Nii-chan?” She begins, “About the infections thing…”  
“What about it?”  
“Well you know…” She gestures vaguely, and then again when she spots her brother’s blank look. “You know.” A scratch at her chin. “The thing?”  
Inko shakes his head in exasperation. “You’ll have to be more specific than that.”  
“The council thing.” She says, ducking under a branch stringed up like ham with ninja wire.   
“Ah, do you mean the council’s actions towards the infections?”  
“Yeah, they’re not actually allowed to do that right?”  
“Well,” he says, a bit miffed, “I suppose it is in their power to do so.”  
“Really?”   
“There are no laws preventing inaction, and even if there were, the Hokage would have the power to override it.” Inko tosses a kunai at a trap. “The laws are just for show in practice.”  
“But don’t we still have to follow it?”  
“It depends.” He smiles and squints his eyes. “Watch out for the ninja wire.”  
Sakura purses her lips but didn’t prod further. She never knew why her brother was so damn hard to pin down, you’re talking to him about apples and then next thing you know he’s gone, and all that’s left is a bitter feeling about being scammed.   
She copies

––––

//make it sound more like the characters (dialogue)//  
“See?” Ink smile as he plucks a leaf out of Sakura’s hair. “Out in one piece.”  
She stares at her brother with twelve gashes littered across her legs, her fingernail clipped from a stray shuriken and a myriad of green bruises are splotched across her arms. Her split lip burns like a wasp sting as her mouth hangs open, she opens and closes it several times just trying to find her words, her mouth is pulled back in a weird cross of ‘what the actual feck’ and ‘dude I will yank you’. “Nii-san.” She blurts out, pointing angrily at her bruises. “I had enough time to form bruises!”   
“Your chakra system speeds up the process Stary, they should fade in half an hour.” He taps at his unmarked face. “You’ve got some blood here.”  
“Nii-san!” She exclaims. “When you said in one piece I didn’t think you meant it literally!”   
“But you’re better than when you went in are you not?”   
“No!” Sakura gestures to her battered body in an exasperated gesture. “No I’m not!”   
He smiles. “Your reaction time sped up by 3 seconds compared to when you started, and now you have the added benefit of distinguishing ninja wire from sealed wire.”  
“…That’s… How do you even know the specific time?”   
“It’s an estimation.” He shrugs. “Training out your adrenaline response is always important.”   
“But that doesn’t mean you can walk me into traps!”   
“I said it was an impromptu training trip, it wouldn’t be effective if I actively avoided them.”   
“But-!”  
He raises an eyebrow. “What do we say about adrenaline Sakura?”  
“It-” she blinks at the sudden swerve in topic. “-It makes you big dumb?”  
“…No, but technically yes.” He sighs. “If I attack you in a sparring match, will there be an adrenaline rush?”   
“No?”  
“If you’re convinced that I will kill you, will adrenaline kick in?”  
“Well-” Something clicks in her brain and her mouth falls open like a switch. “Oh.”   
“Do you see my point?”  
She nods slowly. “Yeah and now I can also see that my brother is a deranged psychopath.”  
“Standards have dropped during peace times.” He huffs affectionately and fishes around his medicine pack. “Adrenaline turns a seasoned shinobi into a panicked civilian, it makes them forget their training, it’s the last thing you want when training is the only thing standing between life and death.” He finds what he was looking for and hands them to his sister. “Here.”  
“Thanks Nii-chan!” She grins as she takes the herbal antiseptic. “But how does that have anything to do with me? I won’t be release for duty until I’m like thirteen.” The jar makes a moist pop as she twists it open, she takes a scoop and slathers it over her split lip. “That’s like in seven years.”  
“Six years.” He reminds her. “Your birthday is in three months.”   
Sakura groans. “I don’t wanna.” She bites out a sharp hiss as she rubs the cream into the cuts that litter her leg.   
“You’ll have options.” He assures, busy looking through his pack for something else. “Worst comes to worst you’ll be drafted into support.”   
“Hopefully I’ll get into Konoha hospital.” She grimaces and smears the disinfectant over the last cut. “Or just be a regular combat nin, don’t think I’ll ever make it in whatever my sister going into.”  
“Why do you think that?” Inko pulls unrolls a compressed gamjee roll. “Look at me.” He says lightly and presses the tip of the roll onto her split lip, there’s a flutter of wind before a neat strip is cut, the cream holding it in place. He holds the kunai between his lips and works on her other wounds.  
“I’m not cut out for those kinda stuff you know?” She says with a pout, moving her lips in weird ways to test the feel. “It’s all science and formulas and stuff, plus–” She taps at her eye. “–you know?” Sakura shrugs and flicks her high collar in discomfort. “I’m not much of, what’s the word? Special corps nin?”  
“Tokubetsu nin?”  
“Yeah, that.”  
He cuts the last strip of cotton free and sighs. “You do realise a medic nin is included in ‘tokubetsu’, right?”   
“Yeah but I mean like, sneaky and smart every second?”   
“…Infiltration and fast decision making?”   
She gives a nasally ‘ehhh’. “Yeah kinda but not really?”


	9. ch 5 bits

non cannon  
\------  
“That.”  
He smiles.  
“The thing.” She signals with open palms to the store. “That!”  
“I have not a clue of your topic.”  
“Nii-chan.” She huffs, pulling back the urge to crush his toes. “Just tell me already!”  
“I’ll have to speak to the elders before you can know.” He reminds her. “Or did you think I can tell you everything despite all the rules?”  
Well that took the steam out of her boat.  
She sighs and scratches at her head, pouting when her brother pats her head apologetically. It wasn’t like she wanted to know…well, she did, but there are a lot of things that would put her head on more hit lists than straw on farmland. It’s a shinobi’s world, her grandma would always grumble, nothing’s left for the diddly darn civilians.  
A jolt runs down her spine when she realises she’d been left in the dust. She pockets the hairclip and rushes to catch up. 

The girl wasn’t here.  
Sakura presses her thumb on the elaborate hairclip, feeling each and every groove. It’s a circular hairclip, sleek rose gold vines curl around brilliant amethyst flowers, the leaves were dotted with green crystal paint, the type that solidified into durable gems. It was less like a hair ‘clip’ and more like a comb pin, one that you’d slide into a bun like a cherry on the side.  
If only she was here to receive it  
Sakura was sure that the girl would be in the park around noon, she was dead sure of it; every day no matter how sunny it was, the girl would be here at around the same time, maybe not on the same days but within the same time frame.  
So why wasn’t she here now?  
Her friends are here, same three girls crowding around the same oak tree that they’d claimed as theirs, and it’s not like it’s storming either, no, the sky’s perfectly sunny. Maybe she’s sick, Sakura reasons with herself, maybe she’s broken something and was grounded or just didn’t feel like coming, maybe there was a family emergency and an emergency is more important than going to the park. Plus, she reminds herself sourly, it’s not like she’d promised to be here or anything. Sakura hadn’t asked the girl for her forgiveness just yet, that’s what the hairclip is for. In hindsight she probably should have asked to see her first before running off on her own, promising to make up for the little incident, and then failing to make up for said incident because she forgot what her voice was for. 

She clutches the hairclip and fumbles with it uncertainly, glaring down at every detail, making sure not a scratch was present on the clip that she’s about to buy.  
Well, the clip that her brother is about to buy for her but that’s beside the point.  
After hours of searching the deep depths of the jewellery store, she’s found the diamond in the deep; It’s orchid purple, glittery amethyst flowers dot the spine of the clip like a waterfall, it’s so simple yet so stunning. The tooth portion is rose gold, she tried bending it but it just snapped back at her, guess it really is as sturdy as it claimed. It was perfect–  
Until she saw a hairclip fit for a queen; Brilliantly blue, the crystal flowers curled around a circle like delicate vines, the metal pin part was simple and silver which just added to its beauty.  
She wanted to cry.  
It must have leaked onto her face because the next thing she knew, her brother had brough both and asked the store owner to merge the two into one. The owner looks at her and chuckled a bit, the important word here is ‘her’, the owner looked at her, not her brother who was the one buying. Was her face really that obvious?  
The end result was a circular silver hairclip, the blue crystals now cradles the amethyst, each jewel intertwines with the next seamlessly, you wouldn’t be able to tell it was made from two separate things.

Sakura squints at the box of hair pins, hears it rattle as she shakes it and places it back onto the shelf.  
“Any luck?”  
Her shoulders slump as she sighs. “No, I just don’t know what to get her you know?” She points at the various accessories. “There’s so many! I didn’t even know half these colours existed!”  
Inko shakes his head at her with a huff. “Stop being dramatic and pick one, we’ve been here for three hours.”  
“Three productive hours.”  
“Sakura.” He says. “I’ll choose four and you can decide on the best one. Our Grandma is ought to be home now and cooking, so if you don’t want to eat cold soup then I suggest you hurry up.”  
“Oh, is it Friday already?” She blinks in surprise.  
Inko nods and walks to the other end of the shop, he disappears for a good few minutes before he calls her over, maybe to murder her for loitering around the shop. Passing through the various shelfs and glass showcases, she cringes at the sheer fanciness of the containers her brother is hovering over.  
He waves her over. “See this one?” He points to a jewelled hair clip; a rectangle of brilliant blue as clear as the ocean, if she didn’t know better she’d think it’s a genjutsu from how shiny it is. The clip part is some sort of white metal, rosy-ish but not quite pink, she think maybe it’s rose gold. “That’s your first option.”  
“Nii-chan don’t you think that’s a bit overkill?” She says. “I’m not proposing to her or anything.”  
He looks at her, unimpressed. “I doubt it’ll make the best impression if you apologise to someone with a five wun hairclip.”  
“Yeah but this is–” She checks the price tag, “–fifty yeun, that’s way too much for a hair clip y’know?”  
“This isn’t fifty, that one is.” He points at a sealed glass box. “This one’s ten.”  
“Ten yeun?” She squints at it in awe. “But it looks so… Expensive.”  
He chuckles. “It’s chakra forged crystal, not too expensive to make, but the quality and strength is the deciding factor so you’ll see some going for upwards of a hundred yeun.” He points to a hair pin. “Not quite a hair clip


	10. Chapter 10

not canon   
\--  
Oh god they’re choking– someone’s choking!  
Sakura runs towards the sound, eyes wide, palms clammy.   
Small legs kick out from under the back of a man. The man’s on top of them, choking them and she can hear the boy going blue in the face.   
“Get off him!” She barely recognises her voice, so shrill and hysterical. “Stop!”  
She pushes at the mammoth of a man, their body not even tilting a little. She hammers at him but no matter how hard she tries he just won’t move!   
“Stop it!”  
The man swats her aside, wood pounds into her spine, her breath misses a beat from the force. She can’t see, black all around until she can see again. Vaguely she understands she’d been hit in the head but it doesn’t register, sound oozes all around her but she can’t pick out a single one.   
Screams. A man over a boy, their large adult hands covering the boy’s neck. Constricting, constricting, choking– A white circle almost glows on the red scarf, the boy’s scarf – and the boy is screaming bloody murder, snot and tears cover his face and he claws– pries away at their hands.  
Her head pulses. Once, twice.   
The man is choking a boy to death and that boy is family.   
“Leave him alone.” Her voice is small as she struggles to her feet. How hard did her head get hit? “Stop-!”  
Clarity washes over her like a wave and she can feel again, smell the desperation in the air and her chakra pulses, gushes into her palms and she snarls. “Get off him you dirty man!”  
A scream tears out of her throat and a scream tears out of the man’s a second later.  
Blood.  
Blood coats her hand, coats his throat and coats the ground.   
Her knuckles are busted, blown into mince from her own chakra. The blood on the man isn’t his and nor the blood on the ground.   
He’s been pushed across the alley, half choking from her punch. A part of her wished she aimed a little higher, maybe then his throat would have collapsed, just like how he’d tried to collapse the boy’s.   
Sakura snivels, tears stinging her eyes as she shakily takes her busted hand in the other.   
Bile churned in her throat.   
She’s blown her three of her fingers right off and all that’s keeping then attached are a few white strings of tendon, blood oozes in between the layers of skin and muscle, staining the sandy ground red. Her knuckles are white, so so white at the end of her palm.   
Nausea crawls across her shoulders and up around her throat.   
“Oh fuck oh shit.” The man breathes out in panic, eyes flickering erratically between the Haruno symbol on her sleeves and her bloody bloody hand. He hauls himself up and makes a run for it, face as pale as the bones in her knuckles.   
Sakura takes a trembling breath and walks hesitantly towards the boy.   
“Are you okay?” She kneels, knees weak as they hit the ground harshly. “Cousin?”  
He tries to breath in but chokes on air instead, each cough is a harsh wheeze, scratching through his throat. “I–” Coughs rack through his frail body. “–I’m okay.” He says as he coughs even more.   
She reaches out with her busted hand and pulls back in shock. Her fingers dangle.   
“Hey.” She reaches out again but with her other hand, the one she didn’t blow in half. “Let’s go.”  
Reaching around him, she tries to lift him up but he’s coughing too much and too violently for her to carry. She can’t do this alone but there’s no one around to help. The streets are silent, even the man is long gone.   
It feels like a ghost town now.   
“Come on.” She whispers and tries to get a good grip on him. She needs to get them both to somewhere with people, somewhere with Harunos. 

\----

He doesn’t make it far.   
Her brother has him caught by the throat, lifting the man twice his weight off the ground. A storm gathers on his face when sees the state of her hand, and then he looked to her side where the boy lies, coughing with each wheezing inhale.   
Sakura barely registers the loud cry as her brother drops the man and snaps his leg.   
The man screams, hysterical with pain but her brother is beyond sympathy. He lifts the man up again, eyes spinning red.   
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” His voice is compressed, like coils of string attempting to contain a bonfire.   
“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.” The man bumbles, white faced and eyes rolled back in pain. “I’m sorry please I’m sorry I’m sorry I–”  
(^ This took an hour to write and I’m not even using it…)  
Sakura hums an okay and walks into their yard, shoulder not even tensing when she heard the gate lock.   
She’s heard of some clan members living in east Konoha, unlike other clans they’re not too strict with living locations; they have no reason to after all, they’re not like the Uchiha who has a highly sought after doujutsu, or the Inuzukas who has a strong pack sense. They’re only really know for being a giant clan that spreads everywhere, civilian wise anyways. The shinobi world knows a bit more; that the Harunos are good with chakra and has a strong relationship with the Uchihas, which has lasted for as long as the Yakusos were aligned with the Senju.   
But when that’s all said and done, there has been a time when pretend Harunos had tried to fool the real ones, hoping that sewing a white circle onto their clothes would grant them discounts at clan owned stores.   
The little good that did them, their hospital fees costed far more than those ‘discounts’ they were trying to get.   
Plus– Sakura puts her hand in her pocket, clutching at a piece of paper –even if they faked it for more malicious reasons, the Harunos aren’t stupid. She just really hopes it doesn’t come down to it, it shouldn’t have to.   
“Did you get left alone?” The woman asks, guiding Sakura into her house.   
Her face flushes. “Well… It’s more like I ran off…”   
“Kids these days,” she smiles, “always so rash.” Her smile hardens and her green eyes cools. “Do you at least have…?”  
“Yep!” Sakura knows what she’s alluding to, she shows the woman the piece of paper she’s been gripping. Well that confirms their Haruno-ness to them both. They can both breath a little easier now. 

\---

“Nii-chan!” Sakura greets, sticking her arm up in a wave. “Over here!”   
Inko smiles as he rises from the bench, dusting off his pants. “Ah you must be Ino.” He says, giving his sister a pat on the head. “Hope she didn’t terrorise you too much.”  
Sakura squawks and swats at his hand.   
“Quite the opposite, she is the most pleasant company.” She says, mouth still in a flat line. “Though excuse my rudeness, times flies by and I need to hurry.”  
He blinks for a second too long. “All is well, take care on your way home.”  
“Oh, bye bye Ino!”  
The lack of an honorific made Ino pause, she stands there for a moment, trying to process it. “Ah…Goodbye Sakura, Haruno-san.” She hurries out before rushing off, pebbles crunching under her steps.   
Sakura turns to Inko, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “How did you know her name?”  
“Did you not?” He returns her stare with twice the confusion. “She’s a clan heir from a main clan, practically an ‘idol’ fame wise.”

\--

Sakura wasn’t feeling the best when she opened the door. Her brother had to ditch her on the way home for an urgent mission, leaving her to struggle home with their groceries. They’d stopped by the local market a little after she parted ways with Ino, and a little before a blonde guy smashed into her, causing her to drop and break all three jars of jam; they were her favourite ones, made with citron that only flowered twice a year.   
He yells out something about ‘sorry need to catch scarf’ before skirting down the street, parting the crowd like a balling ball through balling pins. And she swears this was planned because Sasuke just so happens to walk out of a store, step on her broken jam jars and holy lyre, she never knew ankles could bend like that.   
So yeah, a not too great end to (what would have been) a pretty good day.   
She jumps onto her tippy toes, dumps the paper bags onto the stone counter and huffs, shoulders slumping with relief. These bags really gives her something to think about, for one, why the heck does her brother need five ten kilo cans of chili sauces? When she raised these dumbbell worthy cans in question, he’d simply smiled and made a shushing motion.   
She tucks back her short fringe, frowning when they fall back into her eyes.   
How annoying.   
It wasn’t until she took in a deep breath,   
\--

Sakura collapses into the cool sheets, 

Sakura trips out of her slippers and onto her bed, sighing drowsily into the cool cotton sheets. It feels like twelve gorillas used her as a coconut smashing device and a nail puller all at the same time. Maybe she pulled something when she dashed up that hill, a stupid decision when not even 2 hours before she’d been running for her life, body twisting into poses she didn’t even know existed to dodge a million sharp blades.   
“Stupid Nii-chan…” She mumbles, weakly smacking at the mattress. “...Always making me run so much…”  
It wasn’t that she wasn’t fit, or that she was twelve years behind in training; she’s been doing katas and strength drills everyday for the past two years, but somehow she could never keep up. Her brother wasn’t even a prodigy as far as she knew, just a little stronger than average Jounin. Her family isn’t even that strong, just average.   
She shifts, leaning on her elbows for support, glancing down at the thin ropes of muscles on her arm.   
Was it not enough? Was sticking to a strict training regimen not enough? By her age her siblings were already able to keep up with most Chunin, did they not do the same thing? Was studying medical texts a bad idea? A waste of time that would get her killed as soon as she graduates?   
Dropping her head, she sighs. Calling forth her chakra to do some basic exercises. She lets it run free without bounds, shifting into as many shapes and animals as it liked, which so far has been a cat, a bird and a dog. The dog barks at her silently, engulfing everything around it in a soft blue glow.   
She crushes it in her palms, blue drips between the gaps of her fingers, vaporizing faster than it can flow.   
Something tight bubbles at the base of her throat, slithering around her larynx as if to choke her. It stabs at the back of her eyes like an army of angry ants

**Author's Note:**

> There'll probably be lots of errors as well, but I hope this provides some entertainment while I get the second chapter up because that first chapter's word count is pitiful.


End file.
